GenAdmin. Colin Charlton
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the only one with a doctorate in rhetoric and composition. My love of collaboration also urges me resist the the even as I have invoked my role as it pertains to my responsibilities for writing and writing students and my disciplinary affiliation that shapes my beliefs and arguments on campus. I also resist the phrase because for many people it’s seen in quite a reductive way, as little more than a manager of multiple composition sections and their teachers, mainly TAs and adjuncts. As the WPA, I’m also a WPA for life even though I imagine not being the only WPA because I think the WPA is too conflated with the program, and I want to see it diversify and entail more of a shared programmatic commitment. As the WPA, I’m in the position of needing to try to define and imagine what else that could mean.
Colin: I usually don’t think about a class, a teacher, or a curriculum apart from a program. Makes for complicated negotiations, but I adopted the mantra don’t teach what you love early on. That just leads to disappointment. I’d rather teach what I don’t know (yet) under an umbrella or vision for the smaller pieces—like a first-year writing class—as a smaller part of a greater sequence. As someone obsessed with invention in senses beyond rhetoric and composition, I still can’t function without a map. Some would say that explains why Jonikka and I are together. Anyone who goes off the reservation needs a map. But her involvement with WPA never seemed programmed. Our discussions always gave me a sense that, for my own personal style of teaching and philosophy of learning, I had to know about, think about, and live with the larger structures of power, persuasion, invention, and functionality that surrounded me in any job. My obsession with invention morphed into a desire to change what I perceived as detrimental dependence on expert-apprentice models for learning in rhetoric and composition. But you have to be in the administrative mix to change that particular dichotomy, or at least you have a better chance to promote significant change. So when I had an opportunity to coordinate developmental courses at my current university, I felt compelled to choose it, to become officially a teacher-scholar-administrator. But you really have to just keep adding hyphens, especially in terms of what I have come to see as GenAdmin. I have a willingness to engage, and a need to not rely on another class of people to take care of what I do or don’t do in the set of classes I’m responsible for, in my classrooms, or in my writing.
Tarez: I think that what sets GenAdmin apart is its intellectual orientation to the work, i.e., having been brought up under the onus that one can do the work willingly, prepared, and excitedly, that doing the work is likely intrinsic to all the other dimensions of our selves, and that doing the work carries multiple forms beyond the lone writing program director. There is something exciting in the realization that what brings us together for the writing of this book—and what may have brought some of us together to do WPA coursework in graduate school—is our need to theorize and to articulate our theories as fundamental, not only to the daily operations of the courses or the programs we direct, but also to the epistemic fissures and openings that drive the field forward. There is also something hopeful about knowing that there do exist collaborative models for program direction, and that one need not always be the WPA to carry influence on campus. Before and throughout graduate school, it had always been my experience that the writing program was one of the most dynamic, fluid, and contentious systems of activity on campus. When its players were committed to that contention and oriented towards that dynamism, the work felt rewarding indeed.
Amy: The year that I applied for my current job, the university had two rhetoric and composition lines open—one for a rhetoric and composition specialist and one for a rhetoric and composition specialist who would be the WPA. At the time, I was in a non-tenure track WAC job at the institution where my husband had been offered a tenure-track job. WAC wasn’t my forte, and at the time I believed I wanted a tenure-track job that didn’t have administrative responsibilities, so I applied for the non-WPA rhetoric and composition job. Because of budget shortfalls, they were only able to hire one position, and although I didn’t officially apply for it, they offered me the WPA job because of my experiences as the Assistant WPA in graduate school. I chose to take the job because I wanted to work toward tenure, and I knew that I could do the WPA work they required, but I was nervous about being the WPA before tenure. Now that I’ve been in the job for two years, I can’t imagine not being the WPA (even though, like Kate, I don’t like the article). I came in to the job while the university was in the midst of a major general education overhaul, one that necessitated a revised first-year writing course. I have been able to enact the curricular development, collaboration, and big-picture thinking that originally drew me to WPA studies in my job, and I feel fortunate that while I certainly have WPA tasks that seem, at times, managerial, I’m supported by my department in doing the intellectual work of writing program administration that I desire.
Jonnika: I feel like I have been the most adamant in pursuing the idea that what sets GenAdmin apart is our choice to be WPAs, but saying that doesn’t mean that we do so blindly or that we will always choose to be the WPA at our given institutions. We know enough to make wise choices based on the information available to us. And we know the perils of WPA work—of any kind of meaningful work—but we choose to do our best to realize the potential of our individual contexts. I know that I don’t want to be the WPA every day, but whether I am the official WPA or not, I will continue to think and act as WPAs do because that’s how I see my professional world.
Kate: I find I often see choices by the choices I’ve chosen against. I chose not to be X or do X, which means I chose Y. That doesn’t make Y a default choice, but a way of getting to Y by refusing to be or do X. I know what I didn’t want, in other words. I didn’t want a doctorate in literature. I didn’t want a job focusing on technical and professional writing. I wanted a degree in rhetoric. I wanted to be a WPA. Of course, what we choose and how it works out doesn’t necessarily match up. We choose careers and jobs with information we have at the time, and sometimes we realize our choices come with constraints we would not have chosen or possibilities we wouldn’t have sought out. Choice for me is both agentive and strategic and somewhat imaginative and serendipitous. I make choices and not-choices to make my way in the world, but I’m cognizant of how choices might lead to limits but also open to how choices might liberate and inspire me. Part of my commitment to writing program administration derives from knowing I could do otherwise, but I choose to be a WPA.
Tarez: I guess the bottom line for me in how we’re defining GenAdmin isn’t “people who choose the work in spite of the consequences,” but “people who do not see subjectivity as something that has to be overcome.” So the notion of choice, for me is not a simple one or a moral one either, but requires much disruption beyond whether untenured junior faculty should take on WPA roles. Choices can be both freeing and constraining.
Amy: There are days, often those when I look at the calendar and mark the second consecutive week that I’ve been unable to turn my attention to my research, that I question my decision to be a WPA. I find it hard to balance my research and administrative responsibilities; though I receive incredible support for my research from my colleagues, I find myself more drawn to the work that allows me to engage with other people, which for me, is administrative. And there are days when I wish I weren’t the WPA because then I wouldn’t have to care about the curriculum or the position of adjuncts in the program or how to handle another grade appeal. I sometimes look longingly at my colleagues who spend hours writing in their offices, undisturbed by e-mail or meetings or decisions that need to be made. But I am the WPA because I care, and I find that I work better when I care about what I’m working for. My first job didn’t engage me—people didn’t fight about writing or pedagogy or curriculum because it wasn’t a priority for them. I was left to work on my own, but I’ve realized, since I’ve changed jobs, that I need the emotional engagement in order to do my job well. I need people to want to discuss, and sometimes argue, about what is best for the writing program. I want to get worked up about the program, I want to be an advocate, I want to fight for what I believe is right. What I know now, though, is that emotional engagement takes its toll—psychically, intellectually, emotionally—but it also makes me present and engaged and allows me to do the intellectual work that is central to writing program administration. Caring about my job and the people I work with and the students we work for makes me a better WPA.
Jonnika: When I started writing about what choice has meant for me, I couldn’t get a line from the first of the Lord of the Rings movies out